Key takeaways for caregivers

• Co-sleeping, typically defined as infants sharing a room or a bed with parents, is common worldwide but varies in acceptability across cultures. It is practiced less in U.S. culture and parents vary widely in how they view it.
• Pediatric organizations (e.g., the American Academy of Pediatrics ) do not endorse bedsharing, and although the AAP does not appear averse to roomsharing per se, research in Western cultures has linked persistent co-sleeping (i.e.., bedsharing, roomsharing, or a combination of both) beyond six months to parent and infant issues.
• Our research found a link between co-sleeping and more sleep disturbances among parents, especially mothers, which may occur in any culture where co-sleeping occurs.
• Co-sleeping was also associated with greater co-parenting distress and poorer quality of bedtime parenting, which may be more likely in cultures where co-sleeping is less accepted.
• Infants’ sleep did not appear to be affected by co-sleeping.
• Decisions about co-sleeping with one’s infant are ultimately personal choices. If practiced, co-sleeping should be done safely, following AAP guidelines, and co-sleeping parents should take steps to nurture their relationship as a couple.

Article contents:

1. Questions about parent-infant sleep arrangements are complex
2. Do infant sleep arrangements relate to infant and parent sleep quality or parenting behaviors?
3. Parent-infant co-sleeping was linked to poorer maternal sleep and parenting issues
4. Effects of parent-infant co-sleeping are likely to be culturally specific
5. Promoting co-parenting and safe and healthy sleep may be most critical

1. Questions about parent-infant sleep arrangements are complex

How parents should structure their infants’ sleep and whether infants should sleep by themselves (in a separate room) or co-sleep with their parent(s) (i.e., in the same room or the same bed as the parent(s)) is a controversial, sensitive, and personal topic. At the heart of the matter are arguments about what is best for babies and beliefs about that vary widely.

These beliefs are informed by cultural prescriptions, recommendations from medical professionals who argue against bedsharing for safety reasons, evolutionary biologists who argue for bedsharing because it protects infants, individual parental beliefs, availability of sleep spaces and other practical considerations (e.g., convenience), and infants’ age.

Adding to the confusion and controversy, in Western cultures, infant sleep arrangements are fluid during the first year, with parents more likely to co-sleep soon after birth than later. This makes it more challenging to identify whether a family co-sleeps.

Photo: Sarah Chai. Pexels.

Choices about where infants should sleep and for how long may not be just about what is best for the baby, but also about what is best for the family.

Some studies suggest that parents who co-sleep with their infants may be at risk for marital and co-parenting distress. Parents, particularly mothers, who co-sleep with their infants also awaken more at night and have more sleep problems than do parents and infants who sleep in separate rooms.

2. Do infant sleep arrangements relate to infant and parent sleep quality or parenting behaviors?

Choices about infant sleep arrangements can be confusing and may be influenced by competing needs and demands. To better understand how parenting and infant and parent sleep affect family life, in our recent study, we examined sleep arrangement patterns across infants’ first six months of life.

We assessed 124 U.S. families when infants were one, three, and six months old. Most mothers and fathers were White (8%), married or living with a partner (95%), and in their 30s; 57% of the infants were girls.

Ninety-nine percent of parents had completed high school and about two-thirds had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Most fathers (89%) and mothers (61%) mothers worked full or part time when their babies were one month old; median yearly family income was $65,000.

To measure participants’ nighttime sleep, we used activity monitors (actigraphs) that parents wore on their wrists and put on infants’ calves at bedtime for seven consecutive days.

We also measured mothers’ emotional availability with their infants (e.g., warmth, sensitivity) during infants’ bedtimes (from video recordings made by parents).

Mothers also completed questionnaires to assess the quality of positive co-parenting (e.g., support and endorsement of one’s partner) and negative co-parenting (e.g., amount of conflict with and undermining by one’s partner). Infant sleep arrangements were determined from the video recordings of the infants at night.

It is parents’ sleep, and particularly mothers’ sleep, that may be affected most by co-sleeping.

3. Parent-infant co-sleeping was linked to poorer maternal sleep and parenting issues

From the video recordings when babies were three and six months old, we identified three patterns of sleep arrangement:

• Solitary sleeping (infants slept in a room separate from their parents at both ages),
• Co-sleeping (infants slept in the same room or the same bed as their parents at both ages)
• Co-sleeping to solitary sleeping (infants roomed with or shared a bed with a parent at three months and were moved to a room of their own by six months).

Babies who slept in the same room as their parents rarely spent all their time on a sleeping surface separate from their parents, even with a crib in the room. Videos showed that mothers frequently brought their babies to the parents’ bed in response to infants’ distress, with infants falling asleep in the parents’ bed without being immediately returned to the crib.

Consistent with other research, co-sleeping families were more likely than the other two groups to have lower socioeconomic status, be non-White and unemployed, and have fewer years of education.

We also saw patterns relating to duration of breastfeeding and parents’ symptoms of depression and anxiety. We used statistical techniques to consider those patterns and explore specific relations between co-sleeping and both sleep quality and co-parenting, finding that:

1. Mothers had poorer sleep quality if they co-slept. Fathers who co-slept with their infants experienced more varied sleep quality across the week than fathers whose infants slept alone.
2. Infants’ sleep quality was not related to sleeping arrangement at all.
3. Mothers reported less positive and more negative co-parenting, and were observed to be less emotionally available to their infants at bedtime.

Our results are consistent with other work showing that compared to non-co-sleeping, persistent co-sleeping is linked to poorer parental sleep, particularly mothers’ sleep, and with more co-parenting distress and less emotionally available parenting.

Photo: RDNE Stock project. Pexels.

Our finding that infants’ sleep was unrelated to sleep arrangement indicates that it is parents’ sleep, particularly mothers’ sleep, that may be affected most by co-sleeping. This does not bode well for long-term maternal well-being: Chronic sleep problems can increase individuals’ risk for depression, which can affect relationships with other family members.

4. Effects of parent-infant co-sleeping are likely to be culturally specific

Our study was done in the United States, a culture that, by and large, does not support persistent co-sleeping. Parents who engage in persistent co-sleeping in a culture that does not support it may be criticized for engaging in a practice some consider harmful to babies – despite that fact that our study did not find any negative associations between co-sleeping and infant sleep.

Such criticism is based solely on the tendency of members of a culture to accept a cultural prescription as “the right thing to do” without supporting evidence. Researchers should replicate our study in a culture in which co-sleeping is more accepted to determine whether findings are similar or different.

When co-sleeping is culturally embraced, parents who co-sleep are less likely to be criticized by family members and friends.

We suspect that the link that we found between co-sleeping and heightened sleep disturbances among parents, especially mothers, would be culturally ubiquitous, but the links among co-sleeping, co-parenting distress, and reduced maternal emotional availability with infants at bedtime would not.

This is because sleeping near one’s infant is likely to affect parents’ sleep, regardless of the cultural backdrop. In contrast, the association of co-sleeping with heightened family stress should be less likely when co-sleeping is culturally accepted.

For example, when co-sleeping is culturally embraced, parents who co-sleep are less likely to be criticized by family members and friends.

Photo: Kevin Liang. Unsplash.

5. Promoting co-parenting and safe and healthy sleep may be most critical

Do these findings lead us to recommend that parents not co-sleep with their infants?

Assuming parents follow medical recommendations for safe sleep (e.g., the AAP guidelines; i.e., avoiding bedsharing, eliminating loose bedding and clothing, and placing infants in a supine position on the sleeping surface), we do not make such a broad recommendation.

Although our study’s co-sleeping parents as a group appeared to be at higher risk for family distress than were parents who slept without their babies, even when they said they preferred to co-sleep, some parents who co-sleep did not experience heightened co-parenting distress, nor were they less emotionally available to their infants at bedtime than parents of infants who slept alone.

It appeared that these parents were on board with their choice of sleep arrangement. The parents’ relationship with each other was not compromised, which suggests that they took time to nurture their relationship as a couple (e.g., not just in terms of co-parenting but by making time for themselves and each other) and that co-sleeping with their infants did not interfere.

Thus, to the extent that parents are aware that co-sleeping can interfere with their sleep and their relationship as a couple, and take steps to promote each other’s sleep and their relationship with each other, the choice to co-sleep may not be at all problematic. We did not conduct interviews or collect information about this idea and believe it would be an important question to explore.

The post Infant-parent co-sleeping: What do sleep arrangements mean for families? appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Babies’ intake of new information that is emotionally relevant might vary depending on when they last slept.
• After being awake for an extended period, babies become attuned to negative emotional information.
• Supporting babies in their sleep requirements, such as by maintaining consistent bedtime rituals, can support their well-being.

Sleep helps babies grow and develop

Have you ever planned to take your baby to playgroup but decided not to because it was nearly naptime? Many parents assume that their baby’s readiness to engage with others is connected to how wide awake or sleepy they are. But does all their learning happen only when they are wide awake?

Babies were actually better at recognizing angry and sad faces after they had been awake for a longer time.

Babies spend most of their time sleeping. Rather than being a waste of time, sleep helps their growing bodies and brains: Sleep plays an important role in babies’ physical growth and cognitive development, including their learning and memory.

Babies who nap soon after learning new information remember more of the newly acquired information and can use it more effectively to solve new problems than can infants who do not nap soon after learning.

Compared to these insights into the benefits of sleep when it occurs after learning, we know little about the relevance of infant sleep that occurs prior to a learning opportunity.

In everyday life, parents might observe their baby getting cranky when naptime or bedtime approaches. However, researchers have not extensively studied whether babies process information differently depending on whether they have recently slept.

Does sleep enhance babies’ learning of emotional information?

Surprisingly little research has been conducted on whether infants’ learning of emotional information is affected by their sleep patterns. To start addressing this gap in knowledge, we asked: What are the effects of sleep timing on six-month-olds’ recognition of emotional faces?

Photo: Tim Dennell. Creative Commons.

We focused on recognizing emotional faces because faces are frequently encountered and are important visual stimuli for babies. Babies learn about faces quickly.

From birth, babies prefer to look at faces over other visual patterns. They quickly begin to recognize the face of their caregiver, and prefer to look at faces more like the ones in their environment (e.g., preferring faces of people of their race over faces of people of other races).

Beyond the value of recognizing familiar faces, faces are also important because they display social and emotional cues that mirror a person’s mood. Keeping in mind who looked friendly and who looked angry might be particularly important for babies, who depend on the care of others for their survival and comfort.

Studying infant sleep and recognition of emotional faces

We were interested in discovering how easily babies recognized human faces showing different emotional expressions based on whether the babies had recently slept or been awake for an extended period.

Because research has shown that sleep benefits babies’ learning and memory, we predicted that babies would find it easier to keep emotional faces in mind when they were well rested than to do so when they were sleepy.

We visited 17 six-month-olds and their caregivers in their homes over two days. One day, we visited after the babies had awakened from a recent and long nap. The other day, we visited toward the end of the babies’ longest period of wakefulness (which averaged 140 minutes).

The babies in our study may have been better at recognizing sad and angry faces when they were sleepy because the negative information matched their own current emotional state.

On both occasions, we had each baby sit on their caregiver’s lap and tested infants’ visual memory through a procedure commonly used in research.

Babies were shown pictures of female adult faces displaying neutral, sad, or angry expressions.

We filmed babies’ looking times to each face using a hidden camera, arranging the presentation in the same way each time: First, babies saw a picture of a person (for example, looking angry). Next, they saw the same picture next to a picture of a new person with the same emotional expression as the first one.

When babies are shown a picture for a longer time, they grow tired of it (just as adults do) and pay less attention. When they see a new picture alongside the old picture, they pay more attention to the new one, but only if they remember the old one. If they do not remember the old picture, they might look at both the old and the new pictures for the same amount of time.

Photo: Hessam Nabavi. Unsplash.

Babies had better memory for angry and sad faces after being awake

Using this logic, we found some surprising results. In contrast to our predictions that recent napping would strengthen memory, babies were actually better at recognizing angry and sad faces after they had been awake for a longer time.

They failed to recognize these kinds of faces when they had recently slept. In other words, it appeared that the babies were particularly receptive to emotionally negative information after they had been awake for a long time.

How might babies see their social world at different stages in their sleep-wake patterns?

The babies in our study may have been better at recognizing sad and angry faces when they were sleepy because the negative information matched their own current emotional state.

As babies get tired, they can become grumpy which, in turn, might lead them to process information that matches this state. Researchers call this mood-congruent learning. While we did not test this explanation in our study, it should be an avenue for further research.

Photo: Jerald Jackson. Creative Commons.

Although our study was small, the results suggest one mechanism that might link early sleep problems and later impairments in mental well-being. Assuming that sleep problems regularly lead to fatigue and delayed sleep onset, affected babies might be susceptible to taking in emotionally negative information efficiently and storing it in their memory.

As a consequence, the developing knowledge base of infants with sleep problems versus infants without sleep problems could be quite different, leading to different, perhaps more pessimistic, views on the (social) world.

These speculative ideas clearly require more research. Our results suggest that timing of sleep could influence which type of information babies focus on and process.

What does this mean for parents?

Due to the small size of our study, our findings about processing emotional information must be considered preliminary. However, it is clear from previous research that sleep plays an important role in early development.

Having a calm and consistent bedtime routine helps babies make the most of their learning and the fun interactions they have had during the day. Learning to read babies’ early signs of tiredness, and adjust to changing sleep schedules as they grow, can help babies enjoy the benefits of good sleep.

The post Tired and cranky: Babies who have been awake for a while are more sensitive to sad and angry faces appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Naps help learning in early childhood.
• Infant sleep is typically distributed across multiple bouts of sleep (morning and afternoon naps) until around 12 to 18 months.
• Multiple naps benefit infant learning while missed naps can harm learning.
• Research suggests the importance of healthy sleep routines for infants and caregiver education to support healthy sleep.

The benefits of  distributed sleep for memory

For adults, naps offer a period of solace, something we typically allow ourselves only on weekends or vacations. We long for these moments to replenish lost sleep due to our busy lives and to reset our minds after being overloaded with to-do lists.

Science supports the benefits of naps. In adults, naps benefit attention, emotion, and cognitive performance. Other researchers and I have shown that these benefits extend to naps in early childhood. For instance, the benefits of naps for memory have been observed in infants as young as three months and extend through three to five years, when children typically transition away from naps.

Why does distributed sleep help memory?

It is tempting to assume that naps help memory just by blocking out other stimuli that interfere with memories. Later in the day, we may forget the name of a person we met in the morning simply because we encountered so many other names and faces during the subsequent time awake.

Distributed sleeping may protect us from such interference. However, the benefits of sleep extend beyond just protecting memories from interference with ongoing learning.

Naps have been consistently shown to support memory consolidation, even in early infancy.

Memories are strengthened during sleep

While we sleep, memories are strengthened through a process called consolidation.

When we learn something, the memories are initially stored in the hippocampus in the brain.

The hippocampus is small and not a very “smart” storage area  –  all memories get put into a single bucket regardless of their content (e.g., memories of family, a book you read, and your work are all in one place).

Memories are replayed during sleep

When we sleep, these memories are replayed. Memory replay is akin to rewatching (or replaying) the “movie” of your day. Just like repeatedly watching a scene from your favorite movie to learn all the words, the hippocampus replays memories while we sleep.

Replaying the memory makes a copy of the memory that is stored in the cortex. The cortex is a much smarter organizing system – more like a filing cabinet where similar memories can be stored together. This makes it easier and quicker to recall memories from the cortex later.

Does distributed sleep help memory in infants?

Parents and caregivers may wonder how often their child should nap during the day and whether having more than one nap makes a difference in their child’s development.

Infant sleep is initially distributed across multiple naps (polyphasic sleep) but by nine months, most infants regularly have just two naps a day (triphasic sleep).

Photo: NICHD. Creative Commons.

The transition to one nap a day (biphasic sleep) typically occurs between 12 and 18 months. The transition to adult-like monophasic sleep (no naps) occurs between three and five years for most children.

Given the presence of multiple naps within a day in infancy, my colleagues and I were interested in whether different naps aid memory in similar ways.

On the one hand, naps have been consistently shown to support memory consolidation, even in early infancy. In this case, naps at any time of day may have significant memory benefits.

On the other hand, sleep physiology has not been compared across distributed naps. The morning nap, which infants “grow out of” first, may not be enriched with the distinct brain waves that support memory. In other words, the morning nap may not have significant benefits for memory.

Missing a morning nap can interfere with babies’ learning

In our study, we assessed memory in nine-month-olds. We used a deferred imitation task, which is commonly used in developmental psychology to assess memory. This task is similar to how parents engage their infants with a new toy.

An experimenter shows the infant an unfamiliar toy and demonstrates a certain set of actions. Then the infant is given another toy, the target toy, and has the opportunity to imitate those actions.

If the infant imitates the actions, this is evidence of their memory for initial demonstration. We also used control procedures to make sure the actions we were looking for were not simply the natural intuition of the infant when engaging with the toy.

Even though they napped in the afternoon, when the infants stayed awake during the morning nap, they forgot more after the afternoon nap than they did when they had had a morning nap.

In our study, 15 infants were presented with four target toys and we measured their immediate recall of the demonstrated actions to find out if they imitated the target actions with the toy. Next, the infants napped during their morning naptime.

After their naps, they were given the toys again to see if they demonstrated memory of the experimenter’s earlier actions by imitating them. To compare the infants’ actions with and without naps, we also carried out the study the week before or the week after the nap study with infants being kept awake during their morning naps.

Distributed sleep allowed infants’ memory to be protected

Infants’ memory was protected when they took a morning nap: They tended to remember just as many items after their morning nap as they did before the nap. However, when infants stayed awake during their morning nap, they forgot some of the items.

The findings on a morning vs afternoon nap

Next, we considered whether staying awake during the morning nap affected infants’ memory consolidation during the afternoon nap. The infants were presented with a new set of toys and then took their regular afternoon nap.

Even though they napped in the afternoon, when the infants stayed awake during the morning nap, they forgot more after the afternoon nap than they did when they had had a morning nap. That is, taking the afternoon nap did not compensate for a missed morning nap.

Photo: ferhat66. Pixabay.

Further research and healthy distributed sleep guidelines for caregivers and practitioners

Our study points to the importance of naps for learning in infants. Memories are protected by naps at this age when learning is vast – from the faces of caregivers to the intricacies of language.

Moreover, later sleep does not compensate for a missed nap. Instead, the effects of a missed nap can be compounded by damaging the function of later sleep.

In our ongoing work, we are manipulating the presence of the afternoon nap to directly compare memory loss when babies are kept awake during the afternoon and during the morning nap.

We are also studying these infants longitudinally to understand how the function of naps changes when the morning nap becomes less essential. By recording brain activity during distributed sleep, we also aim to better understand the relation between memory and brain development.

Promoting sleep health in infancy and childhood is crucial for cognitive development. This is particularly important for families with low socioeconomic status who may lack knowledge about babies’ needs for sleep and resources to provide opportunities for sleep in the middle of the day.

We need to continue our work to understand the function and timing of distributed naps so we can provide guidelines to caregivers and practitioners.

The post The power of distributed sleep: The benefit of multiple naps in infancy appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers on nap time

• Infants need to sleep a lot because sleep is necessary for learning and the first years are filled with new experiences and information.
• Napping soon after learning may help infants remember new information better than if there is a delay between learning and sleep.
• Parents can support healthy sleep and learning by recognizing signs of fatigue and providing consistent opportunities for their infants to sleep.

Why do infants nap so much?

On average, infants spend 54% to 70% of their first year asleep. Researchers think babies need to sleep a lot because they encounter so much new information every day over the first couple of years and sleep helps them process and remember the events of the day.

For example, napping helps infants remember the features of a face; solve new, challenging problems; and accurately imitate behaviors they have learned, such as a sequence of actions.

Napping sooner rather than later after learning something new helped babies strengthen their memory and understanding for the new information.

Napping may support learning because information is actively processed in the brain during sleep. Alternatively, napping might support learning by protecting the new information from other experiences that could interfere before learning happens.

To better understand the role of napping in infant learning, we sought to determine whether the timing of a nap matters for how well infants learn and remember new information.

Studying how the timing of a nap affects infant learning

We conducted a study with our colleagues, Melissa Horger at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Anat Scher at the University of Haifa.

We studied 29 babies (ages 10-½ to 18-½ months) who had recently started walking and had given up crawling within the past 10 days. Meeting with families in their homes, we worked around infants’ typical napping schedules.

In an initial session, we taught these new walkers to crawl through a play tunnel to get to their caregivers on the other side. This was a difficult task that the babies had to learn how to do.

New walkers have to pay a lot of attention to keeping their balance when they are upright on two feet while simultaneously trying to move their bodies. Crawling through a tunnel required infants to switch from walking to crawling to fit their bodies inside.

Photo: John Finkelstein. Pexels.

The combination of keeping balance while coming up with a strategy for switching postures is kind of like multi-tasking for babies. All these requirements make this particular motor problem at this particular time in development a real challenge for infants.

This gave us the perfect opportunity to watch learning as it was happening because most infants can learn to solve the tunnel problem and because whole-body tasks make learning observable in a preverbal population.

We placed babies at the tunnel entrance and, if they had trouble figuring out what to do, gave them a series of hints. We counted how many tries and how long it took them to enter the tunnel.

Parents should provide regular opportunities for their babies to nap and recognize signs when their children are tired, such as rubbing eyes or yawning, because timely sleep is important for learning.

After this lesson in solving the tunnel problem, we removed the tunnel and left families to go about their usual activities for the next six hours.

Some of the infants took a nap at their regular time immediately after the first session with the tunnel (the Nap First group) and some took a nap at their regular time about four hours later (the Delay First group).

Thus, all babies were taught the tunnel problem and then had a six-hour period that included their nap. Finally, we presented the tunnel problem again.

The key difference between the two groups was the timing of the nap during the six-hour window: The Nap First babies napped sooner and the Delay First babies napped later.

Napping soon after learning is best

The Nap First babies were better at solving the tunnel task the second time than were the Delay First babies. For example, the babies who napped right after learning needed fewer hints and entered the tunnel more quickly when they were tested.

In other words, napping sooner rather than later after learning something new helped the babies strengthen their memory and understanding for the new information, and integrate the new knowledge more efficiently.

Photo: Ksenia Chernaya. Pexels.

How can parents support their infants’ healthy sleep habits?

Parents and researchers have long known about the importance of naps for infants’ learning and emotional regulation. Our study showed that the timing of naps is important, too.

The findings suggest that parents should provide regular opportunities for their babies to nap and recognize signs when their children are tired, such as rubbing eyes or yawning, because timely sleep is important for learning.

Our study offers implications for early intervention work. Pediatric physical, occupational, and speech therapists typically try to teach children specific skills.

In these contexts, parents may want to schedule sessions with these providers so their infants and young children can nap very soon after the appointment. Having babies nap after these kinds of learning experiences may facilitate consolidating the new information faster or more easily than if babies do not nap soon afterward.

The post Infant nap time: The timing of naps affects learning appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Key takeaways for caregivers

• Before their first birthday, most infants sleep 12 hours a day and can sleep through the night.
• Infants who had good-quality and sufficient night sleep at eight months had better language development and greater cognitive skills at 14 months.
• Infants with good sleep quality had higher morning cortisol levels than those with lower-quality sleep, which may reflect more mature brain organization.
• Because sleep promotes learning and brain development, caregivers should learn sleep routines and strategies that help babies learn how to sleep through the night.

The sleep-wake circadian cycle and learning

In the early months, newborns sleep about 75% of a 24-hour day. By nine months, they sleep about 50% of a 24-hour cycle.

A circadian rhythm (or inner clock-like signals) develops during the first year to establish an adult-like pattern of being awake during the day and asleep at night. However, after their first birthday, about 20% to 30% of toddlers continue to have night wakings or poor night sleep.

Photo: NICHD. Creative Commons.

Sound infant sleep is important for healthy development. Research suggests that the quantity and quality of infants’ sleep are linked to learning and brain development.

For example, babies who sleep for shorter periods have poorer memories, and infants who have difficulty sleeping at night have trouble remembering new words.

Sleep and stress response cycles

While developing a sleep-wake cycle, infants’ circadian rhythm also develops to respond to stress. When stress is perceived, a cycle starts that releases cortisol, a stress hormone that provides a boost of stored energy to help the body get through the stressor. The extra boost helps the individual deal with the stressor through the fight or flight response.

Stressors are not always extreme or intense in nature.

For example, infants often show distress when crying and fidgeting during a diaper change, when overstimulated, or when hungry or sleepy. Every interaction and change in an infant’s day can be a stressor and can lead to a cortisol response that helps prepare the body to respond to stress.

Optimal sleep (i.e., sleeping sufficiently and soundly through the night) at eight months was associated with higher learning and language skills at 14 months.

Cortisol becomes unhealthy when it is repeatedly released and remains elevated. Such elevated levels have been linked to poor learning and functioning, suggesting that too much cortisol may harm brain development.

In adults, cortisol levels are typically high in the morning, decrease steadily over the day, and are low at night as sleep approaches. Infants are thought to mimic the adult day-night cortisol circadian rhythm; however, few studies have explored the relation between infants’ cortisol and sleep cycles.

Do infant sleep and cortisol relate to later language and learning skills?

We conducted a study to better understand if infants’ quality of sleep relates to their later language development and overall learning abilities. The infants were White and from middle-class families, and they attended a high-quality childcare program in a southeastern state in the United States.

When babies reached eight months and again at 14 months, parents answered questions related to their infants’ sleep routine, sleep environment, and the quality and quantity of their babies’ sleep.

At both time points, the child care provider completed assessments of the infant’s communication and language skills (e.g., nods head to indicate yes, uses sounds/words to get attention) and learning and cognitive skills (e.g., imitates, looks, or points to an object when asked where it is).

To begin to explore the role of cortisol levels in the connection between sleep and learning in the early years, we also collected morning saliva from the babies at both time points.

Infants with better night sleep had better language and cognitive abilities as toddlers

In our study, we asked whether babies who had regular sleep routines and good nighttime sleep developed better language and learning/cognitive skills than babies with irregular sleep routines and poor nighttime sleep.

We found that optimal sleep (i.e., sleeping sufficiently and soundly through the night) at eight months was associated with higher learning and language skills at 14 months. These findings suggest that achieving good quality and quantity of sleep before the first birthday may relate to young infant’s later language development and overall learning.

Photo: hessam nabavi. Unsplash.

Higher morning cortisol stress hormone levels related to better toddler sleep

We also looked at whether morning cortisol stress hormone levels of 14-month-olds were related to sleep at the same age. We found that toddlers who had optimal night sleep also had the highest morning cortisol stress hormone levels.

In adults, cortisol levels tend to be higher shortly after waking. Thus, the higher cortisol levels in toddlers may indicate more mature brain development in toddlers who had better nighttime sleep.

Sleep enhances early brain development

Our findings showed that optimal sleep in infancy was associated with better language and learning skills in toddlerhood. These results are consistent with the idea that sleep enhances early brain development.

One explanation for why sleep helps an infant’s brains develop is that sleep triggers the release of brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters, that build and strengthen the brain’s pathways for forming memories of information an infant learned that day.

Good sleep also prepares infants to learn the next day. Young infant’s learning opportunities typically occur through daytime interactions. When infant’s have slept well, they may wake up more relaxed and ready to engage.

In contrast, infants who have not slept well may awaken sluggish, irritable, and less ready to socialize and learn. Because sleep is important for solidifying past learning and preparing children to learn even more, caregivers should help infants and toddlers achieve restful, continuous sleep at night.

How can parents support their children’s brain development?

Caregivers can help infants achieve restful sleep by establishing routines at home that start at about the same time each day and signal to the baby that nighttime sleep is approaching.

For example, after the last nursing or bottle feeding of the day, parents might use calming strategies to promote greater infant relaxation, such as giving a warm bath, singing a lullaby, reading a quiet story, and providing a massage.

Caregivers should help infants and toddlers achieve restful, continuous sleep at night.

Parents should try to decrease environmental stimulation to help their infant shift from being awake and active to being relaxed and ready for a long sleep. Dark, quiet, screen-free, calm places are considered good sleeping environments for young infants.

If babies wake up during the night, parents can use strategies to help infants self-regulate and fall back asleep. Parents should understand each infant’s unique sleep needs and should not assume that all babies will respond similarly to an evening routine.

For example, infants with health conditions, neurodevelopmental issues, and trauma often have disrupted sleep. Caregivers of these infants may need additional help to learn how to develop effective sleep routines for their infants.

In summary, parents’ sensitivity to young infant’s individual needs while developing their sleep routines should help babies achieve good, restful sleep at night so that when babies are awake, they are ready to learn and develop new skills.

Good, restful sleep may lead to more mature brain development in the early years, which may be measured by higher morning cortisol levels.

The post Infant sleep and brain development appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

• Building healthy relationships with technology involves not only protecting youth, but also supporting their positive experiences online.
• Helping middle schoolers navigate the digital world involves strategies similar to those used for their in-person activities: monitoring, spending time on the internet together when possible, educating them about risks, and communicating.
• Ongoing communication is critical. Talk about your values and expectations, ask what young users are doing online, and listen to how they feel about those experiences.
• Parents cannot do it alone. Digital technology companies and policymakers need to ensure that the online spaces where young people spend their time support healthy development while also keeping them safe.

Protecting and supporting youth on the internet are both important

Parents often ask what they can do to protect their children online. This is a good question. But another important question that should be asked is how can we better support our youth on the internet?

As mothers to tweens and teens, we are always looking for ways to protect our children from harm. One of us is also a developmental psychologist who has studied adolescents’ mental health for more than two decades, learning that we need to both protect and support our children – particularly around the middle school years as they make the transition to adolescence and into online spaces.

This is why we recently released a report on what research tells us about amplifying the benefits of digital technology for this age group and calling on technology companies and policymakers to adopt an evidence-based approach to protecting and supporting youth. But even as we urge technology creators to do better, there are steps parents and other caregivers can take to both protect and support positive digital technology use for young people.

Promoting healthy development and well-being with positive online experiences

Early adolescence (from about 10 to 13 years old, or the middle school years) is an important window when positive experiences that support learning and connection can affect development. Going on the internet to create, contribute, or connect can be a positive experience for young people. Online experiences offer new spaces for adolescents to express their creativity, explore who they are and where they fit in, support causes they care about and connect with peers in ways that can enhance their relationships.

Co-viewing, creating, and participating in online spaces can open opportunities for positive joint experiences and allow parents to identify any risks or content that makes them uncomfortable.

Encouraging these kinds of positive experiences online does not require an entirely new set of parenting skills. Instead, parents can use strategies similar to those used when children walk out the door to go to school or hang out at the park with their friends. Parents cannot be everywhere or see everything. But they can find out who their children are with, what they are doing, and how they feel about it, which can reduce problems. This kind of monitoring and communication can also help youth as they navigate the online world.

Keeping youth safe on the internet

Parents should consider some critical issues to ensure their children are engaging with online content safely. During early adolescence, when youth are particularly sensitive to social feedback and belonging, increased exposure to bullying, pornography, unhealthy body images, and harmful targeted advertising can have amplified effects.

Parents should also be aware that some adolescents, for example, those with mental health problems and those who may already be struggling with body image issues, may be more susceptible to viewing negative content on the internet and having negative online experiences than their peers. Knowing your child is key.

Caregivers should also understand that technology use also leaves a digital trace that can follow young people into adulthood by creating a type of permanent record of images and comments that would otherwise be forgotten or excused due to age and immaturity.

Moreover, sleep is critical to physical health, mental health, and learning during adolescence, so families should limit late-night technology use that gets in the way of youth getting more than eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.

Photo: Andrea Piacquadio. Pexels.

How parents and caregivers can support and protect youth by making the internet a safer place

Parents and caregivers can make the internet a safer place by:

1. Monitoring and being aware
2. Going on the internet together when possible
3. Educating young people
4. Communicating with young people
5. Using helpful resources

1. Monitoring and being aware

Unlike physical places youth may go that are out of parents’ sight, digital technology provides opportunities to monitor where youth have been online, ideally with youths’ knowledge and consent. Parental controls – such as content filters, time limits, and applications that allow monitoring of online activities – can help.

2. Going on the internet together when possible

Viewing, creating, and participating in online spaces together can open opportunities for positive joint experiences and allow parents to identify risks or content that makes them uncomfortable.

3. Educating young people

Parents can explain the potential risks of digital technology use, discussing the importance of keeping personal information safe and of moderating screen time to make room for in-person activities. Developing a family media plan with your child can help start a conversation about the types of activities and platforms children are allowed to spend time on, and will allow young adolescents to have input into any rules that may govern their use.

4. Communicating with young people

Talking to your child about what they are seeing or experiencing on the internet should become part of daily conversations. When youth are exposed to age-inappropriate content or encounter problematic experiences like cyberbullying or social rejection, having an adult to talk to can make a difference. (Common Sense Media offers prompts to start talking, from conversations about activities to more specific concerns about emotional health and negative feelings.)

5. Using helpful resources

Parents and teachers can access a growing list of resources to help support children online, including:

• The One Mind PsyberGuide provides a teen-specific guide to online mental health applications.
• Common Sense Media resources support parents navigating traditional and new forms of media engagement.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics has a guide to creating a family media plan.
• Teens and Tech Center provides education and resources for parents, educators, and teenagers.

Designing technology to support young people

Even with parents’ best efforts, it is impossible to oversee children’s every online interaction. As parents, we have limited influence over how our children’s data are handled and stored, the types of targeted advertising they are exposed to, and the features intended to encourage them to stay on the internet for long periods of time.

Talking to your child about what they are seeing or experiencing online should become part of your daily conversations.

We expect that the physical spaces where our children spend time, like community parks, sports fields, and classrooms, help them grow and learn while keeping them safe. Digital spaces should be the same. Some lawmakers are working toward this.

For example, last year, California passed a bill that will require digital technology companies to protect young users’ privacy and personal data, limit dangerous content, and maintain default settings that prioritize safety. New York is considering similar legislation. While changes that would enhance safety are important, companies and policies must also consider regulations and design features that intentionally promote positive development in online spaces where youth congregate.

What do caregivers need to know about equitable access to digital technology?

Research is clear that children in families and schools with fewer resources receive less guidance tailored to learning as they begin to navigate the online world than do their peers in families and schools with more resources. Adolescents from minoritized and marginalized communities – such as youth of color and LGBTQ+ youth – are at the greatest risk for experiencing harassment and victimization online, even as they report positive experiences like finding “spaces of refuge” and community on the internet that may not be available to them in their physical environments.

Although discussion of technology tends to focus on limiting screen time, too many students are unable to access the basic benefits of technology, particularly for learning and education. Black and Hispanic students and those from families with lower incomes are more likely to have limited access to devices and the Internet than their peers.

Photo: Omar Ramadan. Pexels.

To help address these gaps, many school districts are working to provide free or reduced-cost WiFi to students. Families who need help to afford reliable Internet access and connected devices can contact their local school district or apply for the Affordable Connectivity Program.

In addition, digital technology companies and policymakers need to establish digital solutions and innovations that make the online world a place of opportunity rather than posing added risks for our most vulnerable youth.

Conclusion

Early adolescence brings new opportunities for building connections, education, and healthy learning and exploration. If we focus the conversation around “teens and tech” only on protection, we may miss opportunities to meet young people where they are and build online environments that match their needs.

Parents and caregivers have an important role in helping our children develop a healthy relationship with digital technologies. That includes talking directly with them about potential risks of online interactions and how to moderate digital technology use, providing oversight where possible to see what children are doing on the internet, and setting limits to ensure that technology does not interfere with sleep and other activities important to well-being. Most importantly, it means building strong relationships with our children so they tell us what is going on and when they are struggling.

But we cannot do this on our own. It is time for the owners, designers, and creators of the online spaces where young people spend their time to step up and build environments that support young people while also keeping them safe. We need to ask different types of questions so we learn not just how to protect but also how to support our children’s healthy development in an increasingly digital world.

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Barriers to achieving baby milestones

Some babies may show genetic defects that lead to a deformation of their brain or body in the womb. The risk of such defects increases with the age of the mother and the father.

Pregnancy is the most vulnerable development stage, especially early on. When mothers suffer from certain infections (such as measles), or when they consume alcohol, cigarettes, other drugs, or hormones, fetal development can suffer. The same holds true if mothers are exposed to increased stress or when the functionality of the placenta is impaired.

Infants who are born prematurely or who experienced birth complications also carry an increased risk for abnormal developmental later in life.

In early infancy, many things may prevent the child from achieving further milestones. Young infants need to develop a stable biological rhythm, and this requires the support of caregivers who feed the them, change nappies/diapers, put them to sleep, keep their body temperature stable and provide protection. If any of these basic needs is not met, the baby may become ill and/or fail to reach the next milestone in different areas of development.

If impaired perception goes unnoticed, other domains of development may also fall behind, including fine motor development, cognition, language or social development.

Finally, positive face-to-face interactions are crucial to achieve normal milestones in cognition, language, social, self-regulation and emotional development. Infants deprived of adequate social stimulation often show abnormal behavior later in life.

How parents help the baby achieve milestones normally

Photo: Shutterstock.

Caregiving is a challenging but rewarding experience. To help a baby achieve normal milestones, adults should remain curious to learn about early development every day, observe their child carefully, and try to be responsive, thus showing sensitive caregiving.

All human adults have intuitive parenting skills. Without previous training, we approach babies who cry, pick them up and rock them gently, seek eye-to-eye contact, smile when looking at them and speak slowly, with a high and melodic voice. Despite these talents, providing good infant care has become challenging. Infants need to compete with work, mobile phones, computers, and multiple other distractions when trying to get their caregivers’ attention.

Apart from living and eating healthily during pregnancy, supporting an infant requires the willingness to interact with children, provide adequate care and cognitive or social stimulation, and help them regulate their own emotions. When children reach the toddler milestones, parents should be patient in explaining rules, answering questions and improving perspective taking as well as social cooperation.

With regard to motor development, a great challenge for parents is to find the right balance between allowing children to try new movements (such as climbing) and protecting them from getting hurt.

Considering perceptual development, it is important not to overlook potential difficulties in any domain. For example, if a child is cross-eyed for more than six weeks during a sensitive period of visual development (between four and nine months) and this remains unnoticed, spatial vision will remain impaired throughout the child’s later life. In terms of cognitive and language development, parents should help children express questions verbally and find answers. A child who has a vocabulary of less than 50 words by the age of 24 months carries double the risk of being language impaired permanently.

Regarding social development, caregivers introduce the child to cultural achievements and promote achievement of social understanding milestones. If caregivers do not treat children well and neglect their social needs, this may lead to slower cognitive development, less social understanding and behavioral difficulties later in life.

Finally, with respect to self-regulation and emotional development, parents serve as co-regulators when the child is in a state of imbalance. Parents can help find words for the child’s experiences and emotions, such as fear, anger or frustration. This is a necessary prerequisite for children’s developing ability to regulate their own emotions.

The post Achieving baby milestones: barriers and parenting support appeared first on Child and Family Blog.

Lack of sleep is associated with difficulty in concentrating and reduced executive function. For four nights, the participants — a group of 82 children, 11-18 years old — wore an Actiwatch, which measures their sleep. They also filled in time diaries, and three times a day they provided saliva samples, which were measured for cortisol levels. Meanwhile, information on the location of every reported crime was obtained from the city police department During the study, 80 incidents of violent crime were reported – 43 assaults, 31 robberies, four sexual assaults and two homicides. Half the children had at least one crime occur close to their home during the short study.

Children went to bed later when a crime occurred near their home – on average, 38 minutes later on weekday nights. Homicides generated the strongest effect – bedtime was on average 1.81 hours later (though the sample for homicides was very small).

Cortisol levels on waking also increased the day after a violent crime, by 111%. Cortisol levels normally increase after waking as the body prepares for the day, but higher levels are associated with anxiety.

The data also suggested that the closer a crime occurred to a child’s home, the greater the impact on bedtime.

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They found three things:

• There is no statistical correlation between cognitive performance and how long children sleep, but there is a link between broken sleep and poorer cognitive performance.
• This correlation is not seen in all children, only in African American children and in boys.
• These children didn’t fall further behind their peers over the two years of the study – their performance was lower by the same amount over the whole period.

The study involved 282 nine-year-olds. The researchers measured their sleep over seven nights using a device attached to their wrist. They also measured the children’s cognitive functioning at that time, again one year later, and again a year after that when the children were 11. Their general intellectual ability was tested (verbal comprehension, visual matching, concept formation), as were their working memory (repeating series of numbers and words read to them) and their processing speed (for example, speed of recognising objects).

The study of cognitive development in children shows that better sleeping helps the brain develop and mature. Children who sleep better are also more alert during the day and so able to learn more.

Why did poor sleep lower cognitive functioning only in African American children? Perhaps they have additional pressures in their lives, for example, the experience of discrimination.

And why were boys more affected than girls? We know that boys have higher levels of behavioural problems – that is, they have more difficulty controlling themselves. Perhaps when behavioural problems are coupled with poorer sleeping, boys become particularly vulnerable to lower cognitive performance.

The study’s findings suggest that family support programmes, such as parenting programmes, should include ways to help children with sleep.

The study was supported by a grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute awarded to Mona El-Sheikh.

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